Tribute to Pat Carr

“Pat Carr was a force of nature in the literary world. Her words captured the quiet complexities of the human spirit. She was a scholar, a teacher, and a master storyteller. She transformed the landscape of Southern and historical fiction over a career spanning several decades.” Pat earned a Ph.D. from Tulane University where it was noted that she bridged the gap between rigorous scholarship and creative expression. Pat went on to inspire generations of aspiring authors by teaching literature and creative writing at universities across the South.

Pat found her creative haven on a 36-acre farm near Fayetteville, Arkansas where she lived with her husband Duane Carr.  It is said that this is where much of her later work was brought to life. Pat and Duane were married for over fifty years. Friends described (and Duane agreed) that they had a beautiful relationship. After retirement from academia, Duane taught himself how to play the piano and guitar. He also created phenomenal songs that you can hear on this website under Unsung Heroes/Art & Music. Pat taught herself the Pointillism artistic style to create the phenomenal cover for his first CD (which you can see alongside his music on the link noted above.)

Pat’s literary legacy was unmistakable in that over 100 published short stories showcased her rare ability to build deep, resonant worlds in just a few pages. She also created eighteen books that moved  between contemporary themes and meticulously researched historical backdrops. Her award-winning voice earned national prestige with the Iowa Fiction Award, the PEN Southwest Fiction Award, and Arkansas’s own Porter Fund Literary Prize. It was said at an Award introduction that, “Pat did not just write stories; she preserved histories and unmasked truths.”

Pat’s sharp eye, profound empathy, and dedication to the craft of writing will be deeply missed by her readers, her students, and the literary community she helped shape. Her voice lives on through the timeless pages she left behind.

“A few years ago when I was researching Pueblo Indian Tales for my work on the mythology of Mimbres pottery, I found myself responding to certain …stories because they seemed to me to deal with the basic human conflicts and experiences such as love, death, birth, jealousy and betrayal—in short, all of those archetypal themes dealt with in world literature. Many of the plots and characters of these ancient Indian tales seemed well suited for a more contemporary world treatment, and I found myself recreating them as my own stories. The following myth-tales are the result.”

Preface to Sonahchi by Pat Carr 1988

(You can read the opening story, Sonahchi from Patt’s book, entitled Sonahchi, A Collection of Myth-Tales on this website under Unsung Heroes/Writers.)